ds that it was a writer's duty
to be "correct." It was well indeed to be "bold," but bold with
discretion. Dryden thought Shakspere a great poet than Jonson, but an
inferior artist. He was to be admired, but not approved. Homer, again,
it was generally conceded, was not so correct as Vergil, though he had
more "fire." Chesterfield preferred Vergil to Homer, and both of them to
Tasso. But of all epics the one he read with most pleasure was the
"Henriade." As for "Paradise Lost," he could not read it through.
William Walsh, "the muses' judge and friend," advised the youthful Pope
that "there was one way still left open for him, by which he might excel
any of his predecessors, which was by correctness; that though indeed we
had several great poets, we as yet could boast of none that were
perfectly correct; and that therefore he advised him to make this quality
his particular study." "The best of the moderns in all language," he
wrote to Pope, "are those that have the nearest copied the ancients."
Pope was thankful for the counsel and mentions its giver in the "Essay on
Criticism" as one who had

"taught his muse to sing,
Prescribed her heights and pruned her tender wing."

But what was correct? In the drama, _e.g._, the observance of the
unities was almost universally recommended, but by no means universally
practiced. Johnson, himself a sturdy disciple of Dryden and Pope,
exposed the fallacy of that stage illusion, on the supposed necessity of
which the unities of time and place were defended. Yet Johnson, in his
own tragedy "Irene," conformed to the rules of Aristotle. He pronounced
"Cato" "unquestionably the noblest production of Addison's genius," but
acknowledge that its success had "introduced, or confirmed among us, the
use of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance and chill
philosophy." On the other hand Addison had small regard for poetic
justice, which Johnson thought ought to be observed. Addison praised old
English ballads, which Johnson thought mean and foolish; and he guardedly
commends[23] "the fairy way of writing," a romantic foppery that Johnson
despised.[24]

Critical opinion was pronounced in favor of separating tragedy and
comedy, and Addison wrote one sentence which condemns half the plays of
Shakspere and Fletcher: "The tragi-comedy, which is the product of the
English theater, is one the most monstrous inventions that ever entered
into a poet's thought